Humbert Humbert, Lolita

By Meredith Melnick

All right, he's a stepfather, but he's still the most horrifying legal guardian in American letters.
Humbert Humbert, a European professor, becomes infatuated with 12-year-old Delores "Lolita" Haze, the daughter of his landlady, Charlotte. He marries Charlotte to be near his beloved "nymphette." After her mother dies, H.H. packs up his pubescent paramour for a yearlong road trip during which the pair consummate their obsessive, abusive relationship. He threatens his daughter with the orphanage whenever she refuses his advances; in the end, she escapes only with the help of another pedophile who is stalking her.